Sunday, 30 June 2013

In part two of his article, Tan Sri Yong Poh Kon
puts forward a multi-pronged approach that can be adopted to reach the
goal of improved English literacy among Malaysians. Reintroduction of
English-medium schools along the lines of private and international
schools but affordable to a larger segment of the population is one of
the options.

WITH the Education Blueprint currently being
finalised, there remains an excellent window of opportunity to re-chart
our course for the future. At the primary school level where parental
choice is significant, it appears that the dream of a national school
where students of different races come together at age seven is more
unattainable than it was in 1970.

In 1970, almost a third of the
students were enrolled in English-medium schools which were ethnically
mixed and growing in significance in terms of share vis a vis other language medium schools before the policy was abruptly changed.

Fast
forward to present day and it is patently obvious that after four
decades of implementation of the policy, our primary schools have become
more ethnically separated – statistics on student enrolment in national
schools reveal that 94% of the students are Malay and 96% of Chinese
parents now enrol their children in Chinese schools, up from 50% in
1970.

Mother tongue

Ironically, it is the Chinese
vernacular schools which are now the most ethnically mixed, with a good
9% from the Malay community and 3% from Indians and others.

For a
large and growing proportion of Malaysian families, English has and
remains the effective language of communication to the extent that it
has become a mother tongue. Such families no longer speak their ethnic
tongue.

Much has been said about the pursuit of national unity through the study and use of a common language, Bahasa Malaysia (BM).

However,
this does not and cannot mean that learning and pursuing knowledge in
languages other than BM will erode national integration efforts,
patriotism or make us less Malaysian.

Virtually all our past and
present prime ministers were educated in English-medium schools. In
fact, the current Minister of Education I and II went through
English-medium schools and universities. They are certainly not less
nationalistic on account of that experience. On the contrary, they are
more confident and accomplished on the Malaysian and international stage
because of it.

By bringing back the option of English-medium
schools, teaching not only science and maths but other subjects like
geography and literature in English will allow us to tap into
world-class curricula, textbooks and, more importantly in this Internet
age, enhance access to virtually unlimited storehouses of up-to-date
knowledge which are predominantly in the English language.

In
such schools, BM should be taught intensively as a compulsory subject to
enable students from English-medium schools to take and pass the same
Form Five BM paper as their counterparts in the national schools. This
ensures all attain the same competency in the national language while
allowing students to be more proficient in English and able to engage
fully with the world.

An independent survey undertaken in April
2012 by Introspek Asia revealed that 26% of Malaysians “always, most of
the time and sometimes” speak English to their children. For this large
group of people, English is effectively their mother tongue.

The
argument therefore is that this English-speaking multiracial group
comprising 23% to 26% of the population should be allowed the option of
sending their children to English-medium schools.

Furthermore,
this option already exists for the higher income families who can afford
the English-medium private and international schools in the country.

However,
this option is not available to the vast majority of parents of all
races who would like their children to benefit from an English-medium
school education as a means to enhancing their upward social mobility
just because they could not afford it.

Closing the divide

This
has contributed to widening the performance divide between students in
the rural-urban areas and household income categories and the government
should step in to provide this option to level the playing field.

Any
attempt to improve English proficiency must take cognisance of the fact
that international research has shown that at least 60% immersion in
English and subjects is necessary for full English proficiency to take
root, and this can best be done in an English-medium school.

Teaching
English as a subject and devoting only 10% to 15% of the teaching hours
to English may be inadequate in building English operational
proficiency (as acknowledged in the 2012 Blueprint p. 4 to 9).

At
least 60% immersion is necessary to raise the level of English
proficiency among students, and ensure that children from the lower
income households are not deprived of the opportunities enjoyed by
students schooled in private and/or international schools.

Expand opportunities

Obviously,
a programme to increase English immersion cannot be identical for each
of the 10,000 schools in the country, given varying capabilities to
implement the programme.

What is clear is the country’s wish to reclaim lost ground in English language proficiency.

Milestones
have been identified to measure outcomes, for example, the official
target of making English a compulsory must pass subject by 2016 and the
announced goal of achieving 70% pass with credit in the Cambridge 1119
English language examination paper by 2025.

We need to do things radically different if we are to attain these goals.

There has to be a multi-pronged approach to reach the goal of improved English literacy amongst Malaysians.

Towards
the end of last year, the Ministry ascertained that the majority of the
70,000 English language teachers do not have the necessary skills level
to teach in English and have set in place a series of programmes to
upskill them. This is a basic requirement that has to be done but this
process will take time.

In the meantime, while the upskilling
process is going on, to increase the pool of teachers we need to call
upon retirees who can teach in English – there are 400,000 teachers and
3% of them retire every year – i.e 12,000 a year.

If we consider
that teachers between the ages of 55 and 70 can still teach effectively,
the total number of retired teachers would be 180,000 in that age group
and if only 10% were capable of teaching in English, there is a pool of
18,000 to call back to active duty.

We should offer them full
pay and at the same time, they would continue to draw their pension
(approximately 60%), and this would mean that they would take home a
total of about 160% of their last drawn salary.

This is very
different from the pre-2005 days when teachers were offered to work
beyond retirement at the same pay as then they would be working for only
40% of their salary since their pension would be paid anyway, and that
is the reason why not many would want to extend beyond their retirement
age.

There are also thousands of other retirees who are fluent in
English but were not teachers. On a short course basis, it must be
possible to call upon some of them to be teachers in English in this
national effort.

In addition, flexible working arrangements like
part-time work can also attract mid-career mothers who have left the
workplace because they could not do a full-time job.

Having
dramatically increased the supply and pool of English teachers using the
above, we need to apply the immersion method of English learning
through three channels:

1. National Schools: Increase the contact time in English from the current 15% to 40% or more in stages over the next few years.

Projects
and activities to be conducted in English in addition to Bahasa
Malaysia. Progressively add subjects to be taught in English to raise
the contact time in English

Using textbooks, if necessary from
other English-speaking countries, we can quickly add subjects to be
taught in English progressively until we reach 40%.

The time
spent in English in national schools to be dramatically raised, and to
work out the resources to be applied to reach those targets and not the
other way round.

2. Some national schools are, however, more
ready to take off in the English language than others. For example,
high-performing schools and some mission schools, which have quicker
access to retired teachers who can come back to teach in English.

Model schools

These
schools are to be given increased autonomy to adopt international
curriculum and assessments. Bahasa Malaysia will continue to be a
compulsory subject and taught intensively. Given their capacity to
implement faster, they could become model schools in a pilot project
that could be extended to other schools later.

3. Re-introduce
English-medium schools as an option along the lines of private and
international schools but affordable to a larger segment of the
population. These schools teach in English for most subjects but offer
Bahasa Malaysia as a compulsory subject.

Using a multi-pronged
approach, we have a chance to achieve the goal of having 70% of our
schoolchildren attain a credit pass in Cambridge 1119 English by 2025.

More
importantly, it allows for our students to quickly tap into all the
knowledge available in the Internet, which is primarily in English.

It
is proposed that a detailed programme of engagement be worked out,
starting with a survey both in the urban and rural areas among parents
of students in existing schools as well as parents of children about to
enter the schooling system. This survey should gather data by postcode
location on whether parents would send their children to English-medium
education if given the choice.

With the survey results, the
government can assess the size of the demand for English schools and
make the necessary plans to satisfy it at least through a pilot
implementation.

The results of the pilot study will provide
government with better policy-making inputs on the potential outcomes
that can be expected from such schools in terms of ethnic integration,
achievement rates and
proficiency in English moving forward.

In
addition, the results, if positive, will also serve to soften the hard
stance of those opposed to a change in the policy that may be long
overdue. We owe it to our children and grandchildren of all races to see
this through.

> Tan Sri Yong Poh Kon is managing director
of Royal Selangor and President of the Federation of Malaysian
Manufacturers. He also serves on the boards of EPF, MIDA and Matrade.

There has been much talk about English-medium schools in recent
days. The end of English-medium schools came abruptly with little or no
discussion during troubling times. Now may well be the time for
discourse on such schools.

Over the past few weeks, many
articles and letters have been published on the desirability of
reintroducing English-medium schools in Malaysia. Those among us who
were schooled in the 50s and 60s often reminisce with fondness and
nostalgia about the good times we shared with friends of all races.

We
also recall the many devoted teachers who “terrified” us but yet earned
our highest respect, so well portrayed by Lat in his cartoons in the
characters of Mr Singh, Tuan Syed and Mrs Hew.

Students then
identified strongly with their schools and healthy inter-school rivalry
contributed to raising not just academic standards but the standard of
sports and other extra-curricular activities, including inter-school
debates.

Looking back, it is easy to see why so many of us recall
our schooling days with such fond memories and wish to revisit those
days of old.

In looking back, it is important to get a sense of
how multiracial schools were then and the significant role played by
English-medium schools in bringing us together as Malaysians before such
schools were phased out from 1970.

Statistics are difficult to come by but there is a gem of a publication entitled Educational Statistics of Malaysia 1938 to 1967
published by the Educational Planning and Research Division of the
Ministry of Education Malaysia in 1967 which is available online at http://www.fmm.org.my/upload/Educational%20Statistics%20of%20Malaysia%201938-1967.pdf.

Also included was an important graph charting the enrolment of students in assisted schools between 1947 and 1967 (see chart).

It
is clear from the chart that enrolment in the English-medium schools
enjoyed the highest rate of growth among the language streams and would
have become the largest group of schools in the country if the policy
had not been abruptly changed in 1970.

Suffice to say that by
1967, English-medium schools accounted for 33.8% of all students in the
country, Malay-medium schools 40.3%, Chinese-medium schools 21.4% and
Tamil-medium schools 4.5%.

It is also useful to recall that
parents were allowed, then, to choose the language stream of the schools
they enrolled their children in.

As no statistics were available
on the racial breakdown of students in the English-medium schools, a
close approximation was made by dividing the total population of
students in 1967 according to the racial composition of each group in
that year and subtracting the number of students already enrolled in
their respective language medium schools.

The balance is a
realistic approximation of students enrolled in the English-medium
schools. Using this method of approximation, the English-medium schools
had attracted a healthy racial mix of approximately 34.6% Malay, Chinese
43.1%, 16.4% Indian and 5.9% “other” students. (see chart 2)

At
the secondary school level, English-medium schools, administered by both
the government as well as mission schools were by far, the most popular
type of schools, attracting more students than any of the other
language streams, a choice made by the majority of parents throughout
the country.

Students followed a curriculum used worldwide and
textbooks in English that were carefully selected and graded in
complexity through years of use and fine-tuning.

Students then
sat for examinations that were internationally graded and recognised as
the “O” Levels of the Cambridge Examination Board. Such students later
went on to assume important positions in all sectors of the economy –
the government, bureaucracy, academia and the private sector.

The
landscape, however, changed radically after the May 10, 1969 general
election and the riots of May 13. Amid the uncertainty and following the
trauma of the events, the then newly appointed Education Minister, Datuk Abdul Rahman Yaacob, only two months into the job, and with little if any consultation, announced a new policy.

The
policy was that from 1970, English-medium schools would cease to exist
and remaining students in English language-medium schools would be
phased out over the next 11 years until they completed Form Five in
1982.

This radical decision saw the beginning of the gradual
erosion of the strong English language foundation, a competitive edge
that Malaysia had enjoyed over its neighbouring countries for decades.

Along
with the removal of English- medium schools, a number of serious
problems emerged in the education system, including low achievement
rates in science, mathematics and reasoning as evidenced in Malaysia’s
low PISA and TIMSS scores, the employability of graduates and their
relative competitiveness in an increasingly globalised world.

It
is no mere coincidence that the top 10 scorers are from the OECD
countries and Asian tigers, and if we are to achieve sustainable high
income status in the future, our scores in these benchmarks have to be
improved.

We are heartened by the current national dialogue
taking place over the drafting and finalisation of the National
Education Blueprint. Various interest groups and stakeholders have been
consulted, including right up to the Council of Rulers, and rightly so
given the special place that education has in the heart of every parent
and central to the competitiveness of a nation.

Contrast this
consultation with the overnight decision then to abandon English as the
medium of instruction – a decision taken whilst the country was caught
in the immediate aftermath of the May 13 riots where many people were
killed and cars and shophouses were burnt and the priority then was
security and bringing back life to normalcy.

We will leave it to
researchers and insiders at the ministry at that time to reveal the
reasons for this sudden promulgation of a policy that had such a long
term negative impact on our competitiveness.

We only know, for example, that veteran politician Dr Goh Cheng Teik wrote in December 1970 in his book The May Thirteenth Incident and Democracy in Malaysia that the radical educational policy change in 1969 was made without the knowledge or authorisation of then Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman.

Referring to the same issue, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad in his book Doctor in the House wrote, “Out of the blue, Tun Rahman Yaacob
announced that all government secondary schools and government-aided
schools would become National Secondary Schools where the teaching would
be in Malay. Schools in Sarawak and Sabah, however would be exempted.
His decision made Tun Rahman very popular with the Malays, particularly
Malay university students, but the move had a political rather than an
academic agenda.”

It is not too late in the day to revisit the
issue of English-medium schools – this time not under the shadow of the
events that occurred in May and June 1969, but in the light and with the
benefit of the knowledge and experience that we have accumulated over
the past 44 years.

We owe it to ourselves to have this serious
conversation on the way forward for education, the bedrock for
maximising the potential of all citizens and enhancing the
competitiveness of our nation in these globally challenging times,
especially with the advent of this Internet age.

By YONG POH KON

> Tan Sri
Yong Poh Kon is managing director of Royal Selangor and President of the
Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers. He also serves on the boards of
EPF, MIDA and Matrade. Part Two of his article will appear in Sunday
Startomorrow.

The phone could hit South Korea as soon as this month, Samsung
co-chief executive officer J.K. Shin told Reuters. LTE-Advanced (LTE-A)
is a major upgrade over the current LTE standard, and it could end up
being the driving technology behind future “5G” networks.
For now, though, it looks like carriers are approaching LTE-A as a way
to speed up existing 4G LTE networks. T-Mobile, for example, claims it’ll be the first to offer LTE-A in the U.S. because it has newer LTE equipment than other carriers.

LTE-Advanced will potentially offer speeds up to 300 megabits per
second (three times faster than LTE’s theoretical bandwidth), so you can
be sure that carriers will want to market the heck out of that upgrade.
Samsung claims its LTE-A Galaxy S4 will be about twice as fast as the
current LTE models.

For the most part, the LTE-A Galaxy S4 seems like a show horse for
Samsung. It gets to claim that it’s the first in the LTE-A handset
market, but most consumers won’t be able to take advantage of the faster
speeds for some time. The phone will also serve as a way to push
Samsung’s 4G networking-equipment business. (After all, it’ll only be
able to convince carriers to adopt its LTE-A equipment if there’s a
phone that supports the faster network.)

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The
website also contains background information on Naning Territory,
photographs of the Naning flag and those of its divisions, the current
chieftain of Naning and pictures of his birthday in 2010.

‘I was told to pay RM90,000 for award’

By LOSHANA K. SHAGAR loshana@thestar.com.my

KUALA
LUMPUR: A week after his face appeared in the newspaper, a recipient of
the unrecognised Dato Kehormat Undang Naning award has claimed that he
was led to believe the award was genuine and he almost paid RM90,000 for
it.

Sebestian Koh, 49, said there were over 100 recipients that
day receiving one of three titles – Datuk Seri, Datuk Paduka and Datuk.

Koh
also refuted a statement by Malacca’s Undang Luak of Naning, Dato’ Seri
Raja Merah Dato’ Abdul Latif Hashim, that he did not confer the title.

Showing photographs of him receiving the award at the “balai rasmi”
in Simpang Ampat, Malacca, on Feb 16, Koh said: “I think the confusion
must have arisen because there were so many people being awarded titles
that day, so he (Abdul Latif) might not have remembered me.

“I
was told by a friend, who also received the award, that it was
recognised by the Government. He said I could even include the title in
my MyKad and passport.

“Although I had never heard of the award, I decided to accept it since they were conferring it on me anyway.”

Koh was speaking to reporters at the MCA Public Service and Com­plaints Department yesterday.

The Star had
front-paged the issue of questionable titles conferred by Naning
chieftains and interviewed Abdul Latif and Ahmad Shah Raja Noor Jan
Shah, who claimed to be the “Malacca-Perak Sultan”.

Abdul Latif
had said that the investiture ceremony to confer titles was purely
customary and the awards were merely customary titles with no connection
to those bestowed by the Malacca Government.

In November last
year, Koh said his friend, a certain “Datuk” Teoh, had called to inform
him about the Datukship and handed over a “surat watikah”.

He
said he was also informed about the RM90,000 “standard donation” for
the title, which would be “contributed” to the Naning territory.

Before
the investiture ceremony, Koh said he paid RM6,000 for a yellow sash
with red stripes, a medal with the words “Dato Kehormat” and a card
identifying him as a title holder.

When asked if he knew that the award was dubious, Koh admitted that he did know that the historical state had no sultan.

“The
one conferring the title claimed to be a descendant of the Malacca
sultanate and I asked around to check if this was true,” he said,
confessing however that this was not done thoroughly as whatever
information he had, coupled with Teoh’s persuasion, made everything
“look very real”.

A few months after he accepted the award, Koh
said his friends asked if they could advertise their congratulatory
messages, to which he agreed.

“Only after The Star article
on the Datuks of Naning was published did I realise that I had received
an unrecognised award. My friends are laughing at me for being a
recipient of a fake award. It is very embarrassing.”

When asked about his next move, Koh said he would not lodge a police report but had set aside the award and moved on.

On
whether the award might be revoked if he did not settle the “standard
donation”, Koh waved it off as a non-issue, adding that “it was not
recognised anyway”.

BANKING scandals are surfacing in Asia, this time in the form of a US$250mil (RM799mil) fine on Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc on claims that it had transferred money to countries facing US sanctions.

According to the South China Morning Post, The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd,
the main lending unit of Japan's biggest bank by market value, moved an
estimated US$100bil through the state for government and privately
owned entities on the Specially Designated Nationals list.

This
list was issued by the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets
Control between 2002 and 2007, the New York State Department of
Financial Services and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said in a statement recently.

Just
about two weeks earlier, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) had
cracked down on the rigging of the Singapore Interbank Offered Rate or
Sibor.

HSBC, Standard Chartered,
JP Morgan Chase, Barclays and DBS were among 20 banks at which 133
traders had tried to manipulate the Sibor, swap offered rates and
currency benchmarks in the city-state, MAS said in a statement recently.

Greedy

These incidents within Asian banks are significant, as the European and US banks have been bearing the brunt of criticism.

The major UK banks have been fined for the Libor (the London equivalent of Sibor) rigging and the mis-selling of products.

Due
to their role in the churning of derivatives, these banks in the West
have been described as greedy, careless and manipulative.

The
recent scandals seem to involve only a few Asian banks, but it remains
to be seen how many more names will surface and what sort of rules have
been flouted.

In view of their important role in the economic
growth of Asia, they will be closely watched in terms of risk exposure
and ethical banking practices.

So, Asian banks, some of which have become very profitable, beware on all fronts.

In
Europe, overnight talks aimed at ensuring shareholders and bond holders
bear the brunt of bank failures collapsed after almost 20 hours of
discussion, reports The Telegraph.

After investors, the
proposals would impose losses on savers with more than 100,000 euros in
their account, but France and non-eurozone countries want the ability to
tailor the rules, the report says.

Discussing possible bank
failures may not be the most urgent agenda, although extreme stress
testing and estimation of potential bank losses should be conducted.

This is tied to the capital position of the bank.

However,
there should be a constructive approach to boosting capital buffer and
ensuring that the bank does not fail rather than what to do if it fails.

It is like pointing a gun at a man's head even before the crime is committed.

Bond bubble

There
is said to be a “bond crisis” out there, where the bond bubble is about
to burst, with investors looking for other asset classes to invest in.

With
the impending halt to the US quantitive easing programme of additional
liquidity, this search for other asset classes has become more urgent.

Nevertheless,
'We see improving US gross domestic product as a positive support to
risk' assets such as shares, but would expect liquidity reductions to
remove some of the froth' from current valuations, including in
corporate bonds.

“Where we have the biggest concern is some of the riskier banks.

'Even
five years on from the financial crisis, we cannot with any confidence
say we are happy with the quality of their balance sheets; this is where
risks of capital losses are highest,'' says Chris Bowie, manager of
Ignis fund management.

Such is the reality of investing. It involves constant assessment of risk, changes in the markets and valuations.
Micromanagement is usually discouraged but may be useful in this case.

Tuesday, 25 June 2013

Providing a student with a taste of life in two of the most powerful and dynamic nations in the world is a winning combination.

I AM always being asked by anxious parents about where they should send their sons and daughters to school or university.

As a graduate of a British university, most people would expect me to be a big promoter of UK institutions.
In the past, that would have been the case, but nowadays I’m no longer so convinced.

Indeed,
the smartest Malaysian parents have already anticipated changing
trends, sending their offspring to the United States, especially schools
on the East Coast (and Ivy League colleges).

At the same time,
virtually every young Chinese Malaysian scion is expected to spend at
least a year or so brushing up his or her Mandarin in Beijing.

Some even attempt courses at the city’s prestigious Peking University.

To
my mind, it’s a winning combination: providing a student with a taste
of life in two of the most powerful and dynamic nations in the world.

This doesn’t mean that I think American graduates (even Ivy Leaguers) are cleverer than their British counterparts.

If anything, they’re just more articulate and confident.

These are qualities, however, that tend to evaporate the moment they put pen to paper.

Indeed, I’ve never understood the educational value of multiple choice tests so in vogue in the American education system.

Why is this trend occurring?

Well,
for one thing, American universities really score in terms of the money
at their disposal and the incredibly diverse student body.

This in turn creates a superb and influential network for the future for their students.

At
the same time, one of the most high-profile recent British graduates
was Bo GuaGua, the son of disgraced Communist Party apparatchik Bo
Xilai.

The young Bo studied at the elite British public school, Harrow, followed by Oxford University’s Balliol College.

When
his father and mother fell so spectacularly from grace, GuaGua’s
ostentatious ways and flamboyant educational choices were viewed as
evidence of his parent’s waywardness and lack of discretion.

With
China now the source of the world’s largest number of overseas students
(surpassing even India), GuaGua’s disastrous stint in the UK may well
prove to be a powerful disincentive for other parents in Beijing and
Shanghai.

Indeed, a million Chinese students were studying abroad by the end of 2006 and in 2011 alone, 340,000 students headed overseas.

The shift may well take time as London remains an important financial capital despite its fading diplomatic leverage.

Still,
the Great Power rivalry across the Pacific means that the United States
possesses a powerful allure for Chinese parents as they seek to prepare
their children for the future.

The children of China’s new rich
can now be found in places like the Phillips Andover Academy (founded in
1778, the alma mater of President George W. Bush), its rival Phillips
Exeter (1781) and the Groton School (1884, where President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt studied).

They’re attractive to Chinese parents
because it gives their children the edge for entry to Ivy League
universities like Harvard or Yale.

Even Bo GuaGua headed to the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) to study public policy after Oxford.

US
Department of Homeland Security numbers indicate that there were 6,725
Chinese students in American secondary schools in 2011, compared to just
65 in 2006.

Overall, more than 157,000 Chinese students studied
in America that year – a full 22% of the total number of foreign
students there.

China again surpassed India as the largest source of overseas students for America in 2010.

Malaysia, in contrast sent just 6,190 students to America that year.

It would seem that many Malaysians still hanker for British educational institutions – perhaps to our disadvantage.

As
this is being written, the best and brightest minds from the world’s
two superpowers are rubbing shoulders in the schoolyards and lecture
halls of America as well as, increasingly, China.

It’s always a good thing when young people come together.

Perhaps
the long-feared clash between China and the West may not materialise
after all as children from both compete in their respective elite
institutions instead.

Monday, 24 June 2013

Did you know that Malaysians have the most number of Facebook friends
in the world? A British research agency, TNS, revealed that on average
Malaysians have 233 Facebook friends and spend roughly nine hours a week
on Facebook. What a lot of time indeed!

Before proudly shouting Malaysia Boleh!, think about what this actually means. Facebook has become an integral part of our lives like nasi lemak,
hence we need to fully understand its consequences before it becomes an
enemy. Only a fraction of your Facebook friends are your actual
friends.

It has become to easy to be Facebook friends with anyone. The list
includes your neighbour’s best friend’s sister whom you once met at a
Christmas party. The time spent on Facebook per week is disturbing. If
today’s youth spend hours communicating online, what is the impact on
their real life communication and social skills?

THE PERILS OF FACEBOOK

As we all know, online communication is a distant, disfigured cousin
of face-to-face communication. Communication is a delicate tool with
many layers to it.

Facebook, like many other platforms of online communication, is a
different ball game altogether. An entire conversation can take place
without even a single properly constructed sentence. For that matter, an
entire conversation can take place with just emoticons!

This has resulted in a generation who lack basic communication
skills.There are so many people who can have hours of online
conversations but can barely have a decent five minute face-to-face
chat. In the real world, conversations cannot entirely consist of LOLs
and smileys.

IMPAIRED COMMUNICATION

In reality, making new friends and meeting new people does not happen
with a literal click. It takes time to build relationships and get to
know people. Now, it is possible to be someone’s friend on Facebook
without even having a single conversation or interaction with that
person.

This destroys the natural flow of human interaction. Communication
has been watered down thoroughly indeed. This evolution indicates the
ebb of human communication skills.

Besides that, on Facebook, we are unable to observe the other party’s
body language. This leaves a gaping hole in the communication flow, as
body language makes up for nearly half of non-verbal communication.

Consequently, youngsters whom are major Facebook users are
insensitive to body language responses of the other party. This will
ultimately result in poor communication skills as youths are unable to
decipher the non-verbal response of the other person.

It is also a common trend amongst the youth to respond to text/chat
messages first rather than to the person speaking in front of them.

With electronic communication gaining preference over actual
conversations, it is a common sight at gatherings to see people busy
texting or tweeting instead of talking to the people at the party.

Our minds are tuned to prefer online communication, alienating
traditional chit chat. It is a rather rude compulsion to respond to your
beeping phone first as opposed to a person talking to you.

Have we lost our offline communication skills?

“SO WHAT?”

The inevitable “So what?” will echo from Gen-Y. Arguably, this is
progression thanks to technology. Again, the age-old debate of whether
technology is a bane or a boon. Using Facebook as an example, technology
has created one-dimensional communicators.

There are a few scenarios to consider, the first being a job
interview. Employers are invariably complaining about how job applicants
are unable to hold a proper discussion despite scores of degrees and
higher qualifications.

While they may have the knowledge, they are unable to communicate
their ideas effectively. This is a career crutch, so to speak, because
being able to shine in the workplace requries solid communication
abilities. In this era, communication skills are a golden ticket to
securing that job.

Another scenario would be networking events as traditional networking
still plays a role in our personal and professional lives. Be it
birthday parties, industry launches or university events, human
interaction is much needed!

It is wrong to assume that being able to communicate and network
skilfully online automatically translates to good face-to-face
communication. Learning the art of networking can lead to obtaining
valuable contacts and forging important relationships that will go a
long way. Savvy communication skills will snag you a potential client or
that really hot date.

As always, practice makes perfect. Thus, actively participating in
such events instead of being physically there but virtually not (pun
intended) will lead to better communication skills. We need to be able
to sit down and enjoy a good old fashioned chat.

Another challenge young people face is to communicate with people of
different generations, something you would not usually encounter on
Facebook. While online, you tend to mingle with people of your age, with
similar interests but in reality it is a useful skill being able to
talk to anyone and everyone.

A sad scenario nowadays would be a family out for dinner but everyone
is glued to his or her smartphone and tablets. Again, there is minimal
interaction, defeating the very purpose of having dinner together.

THE PHONE STACKING GAME

There is a popular game to combat this issue; the stacking game.
Commonly played with friends, it requires everyone to stack their phone
in the middle of the table and the first person who reaches for the
phone has to foot the bill. This ensures there is proper conversation
and interaction between everyone present, with less virtual
distractions.

So, be proactive about the situation. Consciously monitor your online
and offline communication. Ensure you have sufficient skills to hold a
conversation with just about anyone for a reasonable duration.

Realise that while online communication is good, offline
communication will take you a long way especially in terms of career and
relationship building. Take the initiative to practise and sharpen your
communication skills before it is too late.

There are many organisations out there dedicated to improving
communication skills such as Toastmasters International. Find out how
you can be part of it.

Should we deactivate Facebook? Admittedly it is a little too harsh,
but striking the right balance between our online and offline
communication is the key.

Undeniably, Facebook has become part of our lives. Just like
McDonald’s, the key is moderation. A good practice is to engage with
people when with company instead of communicating with someone else
online. Learn to be more articulate and expressive when speaking as
there are no emoticons! Let us work together to ensure technology does
not cause the annihilation of proper communication skills amongst us.

Sunday, 23 June 2013

Singapore's investigation into banks was triggered by the Libor-rigging scandal last year.

HOT on the heels of the London interbank offered rate (Libor) rigging scandal comes the Singapore interbank offered rate (Sibor), the Singapore equivalent of the Libor rigging.

HSBC, Standard Chartered,
JP Morgan Chase, Barclays and DBS are among 20 banks in which 133
traders tried to manipulate the Sibor, swap offered rates and currency
benchmarks in the city-state, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS)
said in a statement recently.

For the sake of money, people will
risk anything. In this case, Singapore is well known as a tough
regulator, but they still dare to mess around with the Sibor. They are
definitely asking for trouble.

According to South China Morning Post,
MAS has censured banks for trying to rig benchmark interest rates and
ordered them to set aside about S$12bil (RM30.13bil) at zero interest,
pending measures to improve internal controls.

It is surprising that these traders have been caught with their pants down.

Regulators have cracked down on market players following the Libor rigging fiasco, which involved Barclays, UBS and the Royal Bank of Scotland paying fines of up to US$2.5bil (RM7.89bil).

This is why even when news emerged on punitive measures for the Libor rigging, very few people believed in its effectiveness.

MAS said it would make rigging key rates a criminal offence and bring supervision under its oversight.

To put this into process may take some time, while these market players exploit any loophole or weaknesses.

The fact that Asian banks are also involved in this Sibor rigging makes it even more unpalatable.

So
far, Asian banks have remained strong amidst the financial crisis.
Their reputation has remained largely untarnished, although most have
been quite silent on their risk management.

Many of their Western
counterparts have had to shed jobs massively and close down or downsize
businesses, with some even having to accept taxpayers' money to
survive.

At the same time, banks in the West became embroiled in
the blame game, came under heavy fire from regulators and some even had
to undergo a serious revamp of their business model.

Among the
positive things happening among Asian banks is the recruitment of talent
at a time of major job cuts in the Western banking sector.

But even that little positive aspect is going to be drowned by accusations of the Sibor rigging.

Manipulation
of interest rates is a serious offence. Resulting from such collusion,
some disruption may be seen in market movements, which may give rise to
uncertainties.

Plain Speaking - By Yap Leng Kuen

Columnist Yap Leng Kuen reckons it is not always true that once bitten, twice shy.

Revelations about PRISM, a US government
program that harvests data on the Internet, has sparked concerns about
privacy and civil rights violations. But has there ever been real
privacy and security on the WWW?

Demonstrators hold posters during a demonstration
against the US Internet surveillance program of the NSA, PRISM, at
Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, Germany, ahead of US President Barack
Obama’s visit to the German capital.

IMAGINE a time before
email, when all your correspondence was sent through the post. How would
you feel if you knew that somebody at the post office was recording the
details of all the people you were corresponding with, “just in case”
you did something wrong?

I think quite a few of you would be upset about it.

Similarly,
some Americans are furious over revelations made about a system called
PRISM. In the last few weeks, an allegation has been made that the US
government is harvesting data on the Internet by copying what travels
through some of its Internet Service Providers.

The US Director
of National Intelligence has said that PRISM “is not an undisclosed
collection or data mining program”, but its detractors are not convinced
that this doesn’t mean no such program exists.

I think there are mainly two kinds of responses to this revelation: “Oh my God!” and “What took them so long?”.

The
Internet has never really been secure. Because your data usually has to
travel via systems owned by other people, you are at their mercy as to
what they do with it. The indications are that this is already being
done elsewhere.

Countries such as China, India, Russia, Sweden
and the United Kingdom allegedly already run similar tracking projects
on telecommunications and the Internet, mostly modelled on the US
National Security Agency’s (unconfirmed) call monitoring programme. For
discussion, I’ll limit myself for the moment to just emails – something
that most people would recognise as being private and personal.

I
find many people are surprised when I tell them that sending email over
the Internet is a little bit like sending your message on a postcard.
Just because you need a password to access it, doesn’t mean it’s secure
during transmission.

The analogy would be that your mailbox is
locked so only you can open it, but those carrying the postcard can read
it before it reaches its final destination. Of course, there are ways
to mitigate this. One has to be careful about what one put in emails in
the first place. Don’t send anything that would be disastrous if it were
forwarded to someone else without your permission.

You could
also encrypt your email, so only the receiver with the correct password
or key could read it, but this is difficult for most end users to do.
(For those interested in encrypting emails, I would recommend looking at
a product called PGP.)

The analogy holds up for other Internet
traffic. It’s easy to monitor, given enough money and time. And as easy
as it is for the Good Guys to try to monitor the Bad Guys, it’s just as
easy for the Bad Guys to monitor us hapless members of the public.

But
who do we mean by the Bad Guys? Specifically, should the government and
law-enforcement agencies be categorised as ‘Bad Guys’ for purposes of
privacy? Generally, the line oft quoted is “if you have nothing to hide,
then you have nothing to worry about”.

Yet, I think we all
accept that there should be a fundamental right to privacy, for
everybody from anybody. An interesting corollary to being able to
express your thoughts freely is that you should also be able to decide
when and how you make them public.

The fault in relying on
organisations that say “trust us” isn’t in the spirit of their
objectives, but in how the humans in them are flawed in character and
action.

An example quoted regularly at the moment is how the FBI
collected information about Martin Luther King because they considered
him the “most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country”.

One
way of defining the boundaries are by codifying them in laws. For
example, the Malaysian Personal Data Protection Act prohibits companies
from sharing personal data with third parties without the original
owner’s consent.

However, this law explicitly does not apply to
the federal and state governments of Malaysia. Another clause indicates
that consent is not necessary if it is for the purpose of
“administration of justice”, or for the “exercise of any functions
conferred on any person by or under any law”.

In relation to the
revelations of PRISM, several questions come to mind: Can Internet
traffic (or a subset of it) be considered “personal data”? Is it
possible for government agencies to collect and store such data without
your consent?

And if so, what safeguards are there to ensure that
this personal data is accurate, is used correctly and is relevant for
storage in the first place?

This should be a sharp point of
debate, not just in terms of which of our secrets the government can be
privy to, but also of which of the government’s information should be
readily accessible by us.

True, there is so much data out there
that analysing it is not a trivial task. However, companies such as
Google are doing exactly that kind of work on large volumes of
unstructured data so that you can search for cute kittens. The
technology is already on its way.

Perhaps I am being
over-cautious, but it seems a bit fantastical that people can know your
deepest and darkest secrets by just monitoring a sequence of 1’s and
0’s. But, to quote science fiction author Phillip K. Dick, “It’s strange
how paranoia can link up with reality now and then”.

ContradictheoryBy DZOF AZMI

> Logic
is the antithesis of emotion but mathematician-turned-scriptwriter Dzof
Azmi’s theory is that people need both to make sense of life’s vagaries
and contradictions. Speak to him at star2@thestar.com.my.

Saturday, 22 June 2013

Historic lecture broadcast live to millions of students all over China.

Students gathered in a school in Beijing ask Chinese astronaut Wang
Yaping questions as she delivers a lesson from the Tiangong-1 space
station

ABOUT
1,000 Form 4, 5 and 6 students from the Beijing No 2 Middle School were
glued to the projection screen in their classrooms to watch the
historic lecture broadcast live from space together with millions of
pupils and students in China.

Many students from the school could
not take their eyes off the 40-minute physics lesson in which three
Chinese taikonauts on board the Tiangong-1 orbiter first showed
how they meditated airborne and measured their weight using a special
scale, designed based on the Newton’s second law of motion, in a
gravity-free environment.

Wang Yaping, China’s second female
taikonaut and the teacher in charge of the lecture, then demonstrated
how a gyro in a high-speed rotation motion could actually maintain the
position of its axis in space like that on Earth.

She pushed a
static gyro in the air and then spanned another gyro. The static gyro
rolled forward but the rotating gyro kept its axis intact.

She
noted that the fixed axis concept of the high-speed rotating gyro has
been widely used in the aerospace field, saying that a wide range of
gyroscopes had been installed in the Tiangong-1 orbiter to measure its flight pattern accurately.

Fifth
former Wu Tong said she was especially fascinated with the experiment
conducted by Wang to examine the movement of a small ball tied with a
string to a holder fixed on a metal plate.

“Previously, we have
been taught on the theory and not the practical side of it. It is rather
difficult to simulate a vacuum environment.

“In class, our
teacher used to tell us that the ball would move in a circular motion
(when one pushed it) and would not stop. Today, we finally saw it for
ourselves,” she said.

To many students, another highlight of the
lecture was the water ball experiment that explained how zero-gravity
magnified the surface tension of water.

Wang made a water film on
a metal ring by inserting the ring into a water bag. Then she added
more water onto the ring to form a thicker water film and eventually a
water ball.

The water ball miraculously did not break even when
commander of the crew Nie Haisheng used an injection needle to extract
the bubbles inside the water ball.

After that, Wang moved closer
to the water ball and said: “Look at this water ball. Does it look like
an inverted microscope? Through it, you can see my inverted image!” At
this moment, the classrooms were filled with thunderous applause.

Wu described the experiment as “magical and ingenious”.

“The
experiment was well designed. They also injected gas and coloured
liquid into the water ball to show us the increasing surface tension of
the water,” she said.

Another fifth former Gu Xu said: “We have
just studied this topic on surface tension. It is quite amazing to see
how the coloured liquid spread all over the water ball.”

Apart
from a total of five experiments, the taikonauts also took questions
from four students who were attending the lecture at the High School
Affiliated to Renmin University in Beijing.

On the presence of space debris, Wang said they had not spotted any space debris since they entered the orbit but they do exist.

“The
number is quite big but the possibility of the debris hitting the
spacecraft is rather small. If they do collide with the spacecraft, the
consequences could be disastrous.

“That’s why before embarking on
our mission, we had conducted an analysis of space debris and taken
preventive measures to protect the Tiangong-1 orbiter,” she said.

“Did you see any UFO?” asked a Standard Four pupil amid laughter from the rest of the students.

Wang said that through the spacecraft window they could see the beautiful colours of the Earth, the moon and stars, but no UFO.

Wu said the lecture was very meaningful for her to widen her knowledge of space science.

She
said she was proud of the Chinese taikonauts for conducting the
nation’s first lecture from space, after other such feats by space
exploration powerhouses like the United States and Russia.

Gu
said the gravity-free environment in space provided scientists with new
ideas and it was important for China to take the lead in exploring space
and acquiring its technology.

“The research and development in
science has no limits. When we are in command of everything on the land
and in the sky and sea, space will be our new frontier,” he said.

Friday, 21 June 2013

PETALING JAYA: High school and tertiary students have been flocking
to certain online pages where they confess their dirtiest secrets and
read those of their peers.

The pages contain postings that range from lewd sex fetishes and illegal activities to struggles with depression and suicide.

Students
submit confessions anonymously to a mystery page administrator (whose
identity is always kept secret), who then publishes it on the
Facebook-based confession pages, mostly without any verification of the
stories.

Many of the confessions are sex-related. Some goes: “I’m not sure if I have a sex addiction. Possibly.

“I masturbate a LOT and I’m bisexual. I think it’s really unhealthy but I don’t really know how to stop.”

Others
use the pages to confess their personal struggles, including one that
read: “I had an abortion before about six years ago and it still breaks
my heart every single day.”

Another student confessed plans to
commit suicide within 60 days, while another told of how he or she
turned to marijuana to ease his/her depression.

The trend has
grown globally, with news reports from countries like the United States,
Australia, India, South Africa, Singapore and Saudi Arabia mentioning
the confession pages over the past few months.

The pages (many of
which have thousands of followers) are usually linked – without
approval – to a school or university, which makes it easier for students
to identify who the people confessing are.

One page
administrator said the students were sometimes even tagged by friends in
their confessions, thus revealing their identities.

The
administrator for HUCP, a confession page for HELP University students,
said the university’s authorities were aware of the page.

“I
don’t think it’s unhealthy. It’s just a tool. It can be used for good or
bad,” said the administrator, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

He added that he filtered all the confessions he received to avoid any offensive content.

According
to Section 114A of the Evidence Act 2010, administrators can be held
liable for any offensive or defamatory content published on their pages.

“In
the case where anything posted from anywhere online that breaks the law
of the land, the authorities have the right to intervene and call the
people involved for investigation,” said Sharil.

> For the full story on school and university confession pages, turn to today’s R.AGE cover story.

By IAN YEE and DENIELLE LEONG alltherage@thestar.com.my

Baring it online

THE 19-year-old founder and administrator of the unofficial Catholic
High School (CHS) confession page on Facebook received a shocking
“confession” a couple weeks back – a student said he had “contaminated”
the school canteen’s chee cheong fun sauce. You don’t wanna know the
details.

As outlandish as the claim was, the admin – who takes his anonymity
quite seriously – thought nothing about it and posted the confession on
the page, just like the other 100 to 200 he receives daily about secret
crushes, school gossip and, of course, sex.

“Since then, the chee cheong fun stall has been almost completely
empty,” said the admin with an embarrassed laugh. “We’re trying to use
the page to get people to eat there again, to help the uncle out.”

Welcome to the world of school, college and university Facebook
“confession pages”, where students can submit anonymous “confessions” to
a secret administrator, who will then post it on the page (not
sanctioned by the schools or universities, of course). It’s all very
Gossip Girl- y.

The confessions can be quite innocent, like: “To the girl who wearing
pink t-shirt and carrying a LV bag, you’re pretty, hope to see you again
[sic].”

Or they could be very raunchy, like: “I am a girl and I have a serious
pornography addiction. Every night, I cannot go to sleep unless I spend
at least an hour looking at porn.” And that’s just one of the posts we
were allowed to publish.

Occasionally, they can be heart-wrenching: “Going to commit suicide in
less than 60 days. Pressure mounts from every area in my life and I have
just given up today. The reason I give myself 60 days is because my
results will be out then and I am certain I will fail almost
everything.”

According to American Degree Programme student Joanne Raena Raj, the university pages are usually more explicit.

“At my uni, it’s mostly about sex, drugs and how students don’t attend
class,” she said. “There was even a confession about someone who saw a
couple having sex in a lecture hall, filmed it, and uploaded the video
to the Internet.”

With scandalous confessions like that, it’s no wonder these pages have
become wildly popular. The UTAR Confessions gained 1,000 followers in
just a week, and is now closing in on the 14,000 mark.

The Catholic High School page has over 3,700 “Likes” (and counting), and
it has only been around for about a month! According to the admin, the
school only has around 3,000 students.

“Our page statistics show we have followers who are 30-40 years old, and
they’re from everywhere – the United States, Britain, Taiwan, Egypt... A
lot of them are former students, who write about how they miss the
school,” said the CHS admin.

The page masters

It’s important to remember that none of these confession pages are
officially associated with their respective schools or universities.
Anyone can start a page, as long as they’re willing to act as a page
admin. The pages that gain the largest followings simply end up as the
school’s “official” unofficial page.

But being an admin isn’t easy (more on that on page four). Some of them
have to go through hundreds of confessions a day, trying their best to
approve as many as possible while making sure they don’t post anything
that could get them in trouble.

Most pages use the same system – a Google Docs form for users to submit
confessions (instead of the Facebook messaging system, which does not
provide anonymity), and a Facebook page where the admin can publish
them.

The admin for the HUCP page, which serves students from HELP University, said he started the page “just for fun”.

“The way I see it, it’s an outlet to express feelings,” he said. “It’s
not just about love and relationships. Some discuss education, and
critique their lecturers. We always say students should speak up in
college, but when the lecturers ask, they don’t know how to do it.

“So this confession page is like a stepping stone to give people the
courage to speak up instead of always bottling it up.”

The response to
the posts have been very positive, even from the lecturers, who often get tagged.

“You see a lot of encouragement in the comments. One of the
lecturers gives really good advice too, especially on a few posts about
teenage pregnancy.”

Like all the other page admins we spoke to, the HUCP admin is very
careful about keeping his identity a secret. His witty comments on the
page have attracted a fair amount of interest from other students, but
he doesn’t intend to reveal himself.

“I’m not doing this to get famous. Plus, some of them can get
unhappy with me (over certain confessions). It’s also a good way for me
to remain unbiased,” he added.

Official word

Many universities and higher education institutions are aware of
this trend, according to Monash University Sunway Campus senior
marketing manager Ooi Lay Tin, who was quick to add that they are “not
endorsed or controlled by the institutions in any way”.

The HUCP admin said the university has so far taken a fairly
liberal approach towards his page. He said they’ve tried to find out who
he is with no success, but they still managed to get in touch with him
online.

“The university’s head of social media said it was fine for us to
post our opinions – just don’t use the university’s name. And I respect
that, I understand that, so we closed the group and started a new one –
HUCP,” he said.

A university media relations officer, who had no idea her university had a popular confession page, was more wary.

“It’s good that the students have a place to rant and vent their
frustrations, but confession pages are not the right platform as they
could jeapordise the institution’s reputation,” she said.

For the HUCP admin, the key is moderation. Some admins are quite
daring in approving confessions, but he makes sure everything that goes
public on his page is not offensive or defamatory.

“The students have to learn to self-censor. The admins will
moderate, but you should think for yourself and know what you should or
shouldn’t post.”

CONFESSION pages have been sweeping the world, with news reports
from the United States, Australia, India, South Africa, Singapore and
Saudi Arabia all bringing the trend to light.

There’s no telling how, where or when the trend started; but the
pages, which are unofficially linked to schools and universities, allow
students to submit anonymous confessions to be published on a Facebook
page – and they have caused quite a stir with the often raunchy nature
of the “confessions”.

According to a story by Reuters, police in Montana, US moved to
shut down two high school confession pages due to the constant offensive
content, but the students simply started a third, prompting the police
to threaten defamation charges. Pages in Idaho and Arizona have also
been shut down by schools.

A more worrying case surfaced just three months ago when a student
at Aragon High School in the US posted a threat against the school in a
confession page, which has lead to police patrols around the school.

In Australia, ANU Confessions, a page for students of the
Australian National University, was removed from Facebook due to
explicit descriptions of sexual violence against women.

But that hasn’t stopped confession pages from popping up all over
the world. Princeton, Harvard and Yale all have pages now (though they
are very inactive, leading one user to comment “there’s a reason why
they bring home Nobels”), while the National University of Singapore
even has its own website (confesslah.com) with over 89,000 confessions
and counting.

There’s even a website called www.college-confessions.com, where
users (mostly from American universities) can publish confessions
directly to the site, and not through a Google Doc form like most other
Facebook-based pages. All confessions are tagged along with others from
the same university, with the University of North Texas currently
leading the way with almost 8,000 posts.